Memories and Moving On
by thousand.stars
Summary: To say that living after the best person in your world is gone is hard is an understatement. It's more like surviving, like walking on sleeping landmines– never knowing where or when something might blow up in your face. / a moment in Harry's life without Hermione. ** All rights to JKR** All reviews loved and welcomed.


Memories and Moving On

 _We sat on our bed, wrapped up under what I thought was way too many blankets, watching the rain fall outside the window. It was one of those end-of-spring-almost-summer rainstorms where the water was falling so hard that you couldn't see more than a meter ahead and it sounded as if tiny rocks where being thrown all around. Her textbooks sprawled around us, hidden in the pockets of all the blankets. Our hands intertwined loosely as she leaned against my chest._

" _Four more days" she whispered, so quiet that the rain almost blocked her out. We'd been avoiding talking about this for the past several months but with the 2_ _nd_ _approaching so fast it couldn't be put off any longer. Not for a lack of trying though, we tried to make the most of the time together, filling each day with happy memories and each night with gentle touches. Memorizing every inch of each other, every mark and scar and dip._

" _We knew it couldn't last forever…" –_

"They're finally rebuilding the West portion of the school, went over to help there yesterday and the school is already looking better so I went to the shop …"Ron prattled on, cutting through the memory. He sat on the chair across from our (now my) bed.

I didn't even answer, just continued to look up at the constellations. I had helped her paint them on the ceiling a year ago. She had been adamant that they _"need to be properly spaced out to scale in actual representation of the stars_ ". I had just kissed while handing her some more gold paint thinking _how Hermione_ but now I just looked at them and thought _Hermione_.

They took turns being with me because if they didn't I probably wouldn't ever leave. First they would talk. Ron would tell him about his day, try to add some funny little stories that happened to him or someone we knew. Ginny would read to me, she would read anything from second year potions textbooks to _How to Gnome Your Garden Ed.7_. Sometimes even George would come and he would just sit next to me, we both understood.

I liked his visits best.

Then, slowly, I would get out of bed and move through the motions of being a person. Not a functioning person by any standards, but a person with clean clothes on at least.

I rarely talked anymore and normally spent my days puttering around the Burrow. Helping Molly clean and cook while she chatted on about everything and anything. I was done with the world at the moment. I didn't want to talk to anyone else or do anything more for the society that took her away from me.

Suddenly, I noticed Ron wasn't talking anymore, sometimes he did that too, just lapsing into silence – too afraid to bring up what was hurting us the most. Just as I thought he was going to say something about maybe starting to get up he whispered,

"What's it like for you? To live without her?"

"It's like..." and honestly I don't know what or how tell him. We hadn't talked about her since the funeral, I don't think either of us could have borne it, but today something was different.

To say that living after the best person in your world is gone is hard is an understatement. It's more like surviving, like walking on sleeping landmines– never knowing where or when something might blow up in your face. All the colour in the world is gone and you're living one of those old silent films, where everything is still in process but you just don't hear a thing.

Everyone told me that the hurt _"will get better with time"_ and that " _she would want you to be happy."_

I couldn't help thinking _"Of course she would, don't they think I know that? But she also wouldn't want to be dead either so why don't you shove off_ ".

"Everyone tells me she would want me to be happy, even though she's gone but they don't tell me how to be happy again. I'm trying Harry, I really am, I go to the shop and help Mum around the house but _damn_ I miss her. When I make a joke I expect to hear her laugh along with me or hear her classic Ronald, but I don't… I miss her nagging at me and telling to not to eat that piece of cake right before dinner an-and everything else. I really miss her." He said, words rushing out as if he didn't say it now he never would. And I realise Ron gets it or a part of it at least – after all he lost a best friend as well. Best friends if you count me since I was hardly the boy he went to school with, or even went of the hunt with…that boy no longer exists.

"I'm just doing the bare minimum to keep myself a float," I whisper, finally finding the courage to say, "Sometimes getting through the days just means finding the will to see tomorrow because I don't know how to move on after the brightest part of my day, is no longer there…"

I think back to something else they don't tell you. They also don't tell you that it's the little things to watch out for, that freeze you in your tracks and cause you to get lost in a whirlwind of your own memories – not the big things.

Looking back, I was prepared for when I first walked in to our bedroom and realised she was never going to follow in ever again. When I had to finally wash the blankets on our (now my) bed because Crookshank's peed on them, and I officially washed away her scent. What I wasn't expecting was to break down crying in a closet after the first thunder storm since she died three weeks after her funeral; it had reminded me of our quiet Sundays. Or when I found some leftover bobby pins in the key bowl and had to cancel the rest of my already limited plans for the day, so I could just sit on the couch and remember all the times I had to nag her about not leaving those stupid pins everywhere. It was the small things that reminded she wasn't actually with me anymore and that led to the rush of emotions I barely had a cap on as it was.

"It was supposed to be me and her forever, but it wasn't. It was me and her limited. And now I'm just waiting for the day when we can be together again. When we can be HarryandHermione. Honestly, I'm just waiting now…"

Ron looked at me, eyes filled with permanent sadness these days. I hadn't seen them twinkling in ages, sure he smiled and joked but it wasn't the same.

"She wanted an opal you know, I told her I could buy her any ring in the world. Any stone she wanted, but she chose that one. Said she liked that how it looked like a milky rainbow, how it was never a constant colour but rather a prism of many" I said as I rolled that ring between my fingers.

" She used to joke about how any gem would pale in comparison to my eyes anyway so she should just give up while she was ahead." She had been so happy when I gave it to her, promised it to her, brown eyes sparking with visions of the future. Now, I wore that ring around my neck, on an old chain I found and spelled to be unbreakable.

"What are we going to do Harry? What are you going to do?" he whispered. I knew he was trying to ask me if I was going to follow her, if he was going to have to burry another best friend when he had just lost one. Wear the same black robes and stand through the same bullshit ceremonies again.

"I don't know Ron…I really don't" I said – because while a part of me wanted nothing more than to not exist in a world without her, the part that sounded like her voice in my head, told me not to. That there was still something left in this black and grey world for me and I just had to find it.

And when in my life have I ever not listened to her.

"But let's start with breakfast, I think I smell your Mum's wild berry muffins…"


End file.
